Short Stack - Lily Morton Page 0,18

green bottle and a glass.

“Ginger ale,” he says. “The steward says it’s great for sea sickness. We’ll be docking in ten minutes.”

“It really was a nice meal,” I say mournfully and it had been. All candlelight and delicious food. “Shame it ended up in the loo.”

He shrugs. “C’est la vie.”

“That sounds appealingly dirty.” He snorts and I nudge him. “However, my golden moment of the night must have been when the waiter tried to give you that throw to put around your shoulders.”

“Why on earth do I want something on me that’s been shared by loads of people?”

“Never stopped me with you,” I say peaceably, sipping my drink and laughing when he glares at me.

“I’m actually marvelling at the fact that you can be sarcastic even when resting between bouts of vomiting. It’s a rare talent, Dylan.”

“I’d like to thank everyone who helped me along this amazing journey,” I say. “My manager. My agent.”

I laugh as he pinches me gently.

“I’m not sure why everyone found it so astounding,” he says. “I wouldn’t parade around with someone else’s dirty bed linen wrapped around me, so I cannot fathom why anyone would want a used blanket.”

“I know,” I say. “And the waiter really appreciated your insight on the subject.” Silence falls for a second, and then I stir. “So, for Valentine’s Day you gave me headless roses.”

“They weren’t headless when I bought them.”

“And,” I say loudly. “You had me beaten with branches while you drank vodka and then gave me seasickness.”

“Powerful as I am, I do think the sickness might have been from the river. And you loved the branches.”

“It’s been a brilliant night though,” I say.

He kisses my head and smiles down at me. “Really?”

I nod. “Much better than an extra penis like the first year.”

He shakes his head. “I’m coming to the conclusion that Valentine’s Day and us don’t really mix. From now on, as soon as the clock ticks to the fourteenth of February, we’re going to close the blinds, lock the door and stay in bed.”

“Will we be together?”

“Of course.”

“Then that sounds absolutely perfect to me.”

Babysitting Billy

Gabe

The law student in front of me fidgets on his chair. I raise my head to stare at him, and the fidgeting abruptly stops. Satisfied, I look down at the document in front of me again. A few minutes later, the jiggling of his foot and the tap of his fingers against his chair interrupts me.

I look up. “Peter, do you have some sort of rare disease?”

He looks startled. “No, sir.” He pauses. “Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”

I shake my head. “If it’s not that, then maybe you should check your chair to find the live wire that you have apparently parked your backside on.”

“Sorry, sir?”

I sigh. I miss Dylan deeply at times like this. “I’m being sarcastic. I do apologise because it’s obviously wasted on you. I should instead have taken the direct route and told you that if you carry on jiggling and tapping like some sort of incontinent woodpecker, then I am going to throw you out of my room. I cannot stand interruptions when I’m working.”

“Sorry, sir.”

He laces his fingers together and for a while, beautiful peace reigns. I stare back down at the document in front of me and ring some mistakes with a slash of my red pen. I can almost feel, rather than hear, his sigh, and my lip quirks. He’ll make a good lawyer if I keep riding him. That’s as long as he stops listening to that pompous professor of his. I think of Simon Finchley and shake my head.

“Is there something wrong, sir?”

“Just some mistakes that you keep making.”

“But Professor Finchley tells us to do it like that.”

“Professor Finchley is a complete tool. When we were at university together, I was amazed to find that he could use a pen to write with rather than his fingers and his own bodily waste.”

Peter appears to choke on his spit and, satisfied that I’ve shut him up for a bit, I bend over the document again. I’m so absorbed that the buzz of the intercom makes me jump.

Peter contorts his face into a grimace as I reach over and press the button.

“Alistair, I did say I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I know, sir.”

“Then it’s beyond my comprehension why are you doing it.”

“Dylan is outside.”

“Why didn’t you say that?” I jump to my feet, feeling that warm sensation in my stomach at seeing him. It never goes away. Usually, it starts when I climb